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Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Steven Chu Visits HUST

From 3rdto 4thNovember, Dr. Steven Chu, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, paid a visit to Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST).

On the morning of 3rdNovember, Dr. Chu attended the Asia Communications and Photonics Conference 2016 (ACP2016), the 9thInternational Photonics and OptoElectronics Meetings (POEM2016), and the 13thInternational Conference on Photonics and Imaging in Biology and Medicine (PIBM2016). The three conferences were all hosted by HUST and organized by Wuhan National Lab for Optoelectronics (WNLO). In the special session namedLight the World, Dr. Chu delivered a report entitledHow Optics Will Revolutionize the World, which drew enthusiastic responses.

On the morning of 4thNovember, Dr. Chu and his wife, accompanied by Prof. Ding Lieyun, the president of HUST, visited WNLO. Prof. Luo Qingming, HUST vice-president, introduced HUST’s research on Brain conectome Atlas, and Prof. Han Hongwei from Photonics for Energy Division of WNLO delivered a report about Mesoscopic Solar Cells.

After that, Dr. Chu delivered a lecture in School of Physics of HUST. Dr. Chu shared his life experience with teachers and students present from a point of view of a scientist. He introduced his family, a family of scholars, his learning experience at University of Rochester and University of California, Berkley, his work experience at the Bell Labs, Stanford University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and his personal research in different periods of time. The hearty advice on personal growth of students and the honest sharing of perceptions of life ran through his whole lecture. After the lecture, Dr. Chu interacted with teachers and students present and answered their questions. Dr. Chu told students that sharing and exchange were vital in learning physics, because when you taught others physics, you also learned something at the same time. And he said that devoting yourself to the thing that you were most interested in was very important too. Then, Dr. Chu visited the Center for Gravitational Experiments of School of Physics of HUST.

Steven Chu is a professor at Stanford University with his research focusing on atomic physics and laser science. His pioneering research on the laser cooling and atoms trapping won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. Dr. Chu served as the 12thU.S. Secretary of Energy from Jan. 2009 to Apr. 2013.